The Greatest Shot in Television: James Burke Had One Chance to Nail This Scene (2024)

It would appear that this was the Titan IIIE which launched Voyager 2. They would have had another chance to get the shot about two weeks later when Voyager 1 launched. (Due to quirks of interplanetary orbital mechanics, Voyager 1 got to Jupiter several months before Voyager 2 despite launching second).

The IIIE did indeed have a Centaur stage with a "thermos" full of liquid hydrogen and another with liquid oxygen, but that's not what we see in this clip -- the pillars of fire and smoke come from a pair of solid-fuel boosters that burn for about two minutes, followed by about six more minutes of flight powered by two more stages burning non-cryogenic liquid propellants (hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide) before the Centaur was ignited.

Cuts from the speaker to some background footage, then back to the speaker, are a very useful technique. They can be used to lie, too, of course (cut from the interviewee's face to the interviewer, then back to the interviewee, and you can cut out context that changes the meaning of what was said). But when used with no deception in mind, they can really enhance a powerful moment. And this was a perfect example of it: no deception at all, just a wonderful visual image that makes an impact on the viewer.

Yes, but the YouTube ed channels are such a treasure in and of itself. We had the “tech” to produce content like this for almost a century, but it took the Internet and democratization of content creation to come up with gems like smarter every day, veritasium, extra history, etc

My fear is that this is also being reshaped with ai, mostly for good now but I feel like the personal touch and passion of these creators is being diluted with the advent of generated content.

Maybe we are in a valley of the uncanny valley and the ai tools will become so good that they can successfully translate someone’s passionate vision faithfully, then it could be another renaissance.

I also feel most of the documentaries are awful these days. There are a feww that are pretty good but I miss the older stuff.

> Perhaps it's just me, but modern documentaries are rather dumbed down?

It's not just you. Most modern TV documentaries, especially series, are dumbed down and sped up. Fast cuts, lots of woo, not too much to challenge your brain, don't want it to get strained.

Gone are the days where someone conveyed the information calmly while not driving a car somewhere irrelevant. No more lingering shots allowing you to process what you just saw and heard.

It was the golden age of the US at least also. Times that belittle, defund, or destroy science or art are dark ages.

I personally feel like _The Day The Universe Changed_ (his second documentary) is better. I love Connections but the basic thesis (there are hidden connections between disparate developments in science and technology) ends up pretty scattershot, spreading out like Brownian Motion. _tDtUC_ is much more focused. Largely based on Kuhn's _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ for individual stories, it traces how the understanding of time in Europe changed from the middle ages to the 1980's- the idea of time as a marker of descent from a previous golden age (1), or at best a repeating cycle, evolves into our modern conception of time as endlessly improving into a better future. And the supporting book was amazing too.

I also want to speak up for the BBC history documentary team that worked with Michael Wood: _In Search of the Trojan War_, _In Search of the Dark Ages_, _The Story of England_, _The Story of India_ they were also a staple of American PBS and informed my understanding of the world.

1: My go to example for this is imagine you walk into the Pantheon in 1000 AD: no one on your entire continent has known how to build a dome like that in 500 years, and won't again for another 500 years. The fundamental way you understand the world has to be completely different from the "newer is better" baseline that we have understood the world by for the past 150 years.

Thanks for the link.

This clip is Season 1 Episode 8 "Eat Drink and Be Merry" and the shot starts at 48:17:

https://archive.org/download/bbc-connections-1978/Connection...

I was so lucky to be able to grow up watching quality shows like this. Thank you PBS (and BBC).

There is also a fourth season from 2023. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30222317

Also note that there is a book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Connections/James-Bur...

https://archive.org/details/connections0000burk/page/n7/mode...

The last line of the video was talking about nuking others...